11/21/2023 0 Comments British drill rappersHe told me the story behind the gothic, opera-esque shape of the mask. It’s also functioned to help him evade the authorities’ punitive actions against drill (as Scribz, the police imposed an injunction banning him from performing publicly) and separate his music from the street life he was trying to leave behind. It’s how you know a man is still active.” As arguably the founding father of the UK drill movement, LD’s distinctive mask has helped him create a performative character, like hip-hop legend MF Doom or UK rap veteran CasIsDead. “The mask is the brand,” said LD (formerly known as Scribz, without the mask) when I spoke to him last autumn. Drill and rap music are become strengthening vehicles of social mobility for young artists who are able to earn legitimate incomes from racking up millions of YouTube views and streams, get booked for regular shows and festivals, and in the case of MCs like Russ, Unknown T and Digga D, make the official UK charts. On the other hand, garments like balaclavas and masks have become genuine artefacts of modern fashion for young people, as well as a way for artists to stand out and consolidate their own entertainment value. That includes racialised over-policing in poor inner-city communities, the claustrophobic sense of fear and wariness that comes from living a life governed by territorial pride and normalised violence, and the simple desire to avoid being recognised whilst spitting crud and posing in front of a camera. On the one hand, such items of clothing are symbols that reveal the social pressures faced by those who choose to wear them. I was stuck in that mindset of wanting to trap forever, then I decided to better my life,” he continues. S1 was the arrogant, aggressive and violent guy. There is Sanch, which is just me, and there is S1.’ When I didn’t have the mask I’d be Sanch, cool and humble. I used to say to myself: ‘I have two sides. That was mainly because of the area I came from and my environment. They’re good kids, but they’re trying to be like rappers, so they cover up. But also, I’ve been around a load of yutes who wear masks and balaclavas, and they’ve got no participation in madness. “Some people cover up their face because their family don’t know they’re rapping or in a gang. “Some people cover up because they might be doing stuff on the roads,” S1 tells me. I’ve seen it develop as a trend in my youth work, whilst talking to teenagers in community spaces and schools, as boys increasingly refer to the need to protect themselves from being surveilled by police (AM, who, alongside rhyming partner Skengdo, was recently handed a suspended prison sentence for performing one of their songs, was too busy revising for his university exams to comment for this article) and from being spotted by rival groups, family members, university admissions tutors, or even their church pastors Drill’s explosive, if interrupted, forward momentum has reflected and reinforced the tendency of boys and young men to wear balaclavas and masks. Since UK drill began to emerge around five years ago, following the explosion of drill music in Chicago, covering up with a balaclava – or in more recent years, a customised mask – has been an integral part of the UK scene’s visual aesthetic.Ī significant number of the biggest names in drill - from SL, 67’s LD and AM at the more commercial end of the spectrum to KO, C1 and members of the OFB crew at the more underground end - have always covered their faces. In recent years, UK drill music has evolved from being a hidden, guarded subculture amongst London’s social housing estates into one of the most exciting genres in contemporary music. I went on my Insta story and told people, ‘I got a surprise for you at 9pm.’ At ten to 9, I’m not gonna lie, we were shaking, bro! But then I posted the picture, and I got like 20K likes in ten minutes.” So we were like, ‘Fuck that!’ We can’t let people blackmail us like that. “They were threatening me and Sav saying they’ll expose our faces. S1 is 20, from Shepherd’s Bush, in West London, and until then he’d worn a balaclava in all of his music videos, alongside his 12 World rhyming partner Sav. “There were all these Instagram pages saying they were going to expose my face,” he tells me over the phone. Last summer, UK drill rapper S1 decided he’d had enough.
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